Winteraceae

Winteraceae is a primitive family of tropical trees and shrubs including 60 to 90 species in five genera.[1] It is of particular interest because it is such a primitive angiosperm family, distantly related to Magnoliaceae, though it has a much more southern distribution.[2] Plants in this family grow mostly in the southern hemisphere, and have been found in tropical to temperate climate regions of Malesia, Oceania, eastern Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar and the Neotropics,[2] with most of the genera concentrated in Australasia and Malesia. Drimys is found in the Neotropical realm, from southern Mexico to the subarctic forests of southern South America. Takhtajania includes a single species, T. perrieri, endemic only to Madagascar.

Winteraceae
Drimys winteri
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Magnoliids
Order: Canellales
Family: Winteraceae
R.Br. ex Lindl.
Genera[1]

This family has been estimated to be anywhere from 105 to at least 35 million years ago.[1][3] Being one of few angiosperms forming persistent tetrads with prominent sculpturing, pollen of Winteraceae is rare but easy to identify in the fossil record.[3] Pollen samples found in Gabon may indicate that the family is at least 120 million years old,[4] but the association of these fossils with Winteraceae is uncertain.[3] Oldest unambiguous Winteraceae fossils are from the middle to late Albian of Israel (~110 million years old; described as Qatanipollis).[5] Pollen fossils indicate that the range has been much wider than it is now,[1] reaching north as far as Greenland during the Paleocene (Danian),[3] and disappearing from continental Africa (Cape Peninsula, South Africa) in the Miocene.[6] Equally characteristic is Winteraceae wood, which lacks xylem vessels in contrast to most other flowering plants.[7] Fossil Winteraceae wood has been found in the Late Cretaceous to Paleogene (c. 85–35 million years ago) of Antarctica (Santonian-Campanian),[8] western North America (Central Valley, California; Maastrichian)[9] and Europe (Helmstedt, Germany; Eocene).[10]

According to the 1998 APG I system, it did not belong to any order,[11] but it has since been placed in Canellales by the APG II, APG III and APG IV systems.[12][13][14]

Description

Members of the family Winteraceae are trees or shrubs. The leaves are alternate, with light green dots and a fragrant aroma. Some are used to produce essential oils. Stipules are absent. Flowers are small, mostly appearing in cymes or fascicles. They have two to six free, valvate sepals, though they are united in Drimys.[2]

The Winteraceae have no vessels in their xylem.[7] This makes them relatively immune to xylem embolisms caused by freezing temperatures. In addition, vascular occlusion can occur near the openings of the stomata, preventing excess water from entering.[1]

Among all species, the distinctive characters of released pollen tetrads are easily recognized using light and electron microscopy.[3][15]

Notable species

Drimys winteri (Winter's bark) is a slender tree native to the Magellanic and Valdivian temperate rain forests of Chile and Argentina. It is a common garden plant grown for its fragrant mahogany-red bark, bright-green leaves, and its clusters of creamy white, jasmine-scented flowers. The bark has historically been used to prevent scurvy[16]

Tasmannia lanceolata, known as Tasmanian pepper, is grown as an ornamental shrub, and is increasingly being used as a condiment.

References
  1. Stevens, P.F. "Winteraceae". Angiosperm Phylogeny Website.
  2. Hutchinson (1973). The Families of Flowering Plants. Oxford at the Clarendon Press.
  3. Grímsson, Friðgeir; Grimm, Guido W.; Potts, Alastair J.; Zetter, Reinhard; Renner, Susanne S. (2018). "A Winteraceae pollen tetrad from the early Paleocene of western Greenland, and the fossil record of Winteraceae in Laurasia and Gondwana". Journal of Biogeography. 45 (3): 567–581. doi:10.1111/jbi.13154. ISSN 1365-2699.
  4. Doyle, J. A. 1999. The rise of angiosperms as seen in the African Cretaceous record. Pp. 3-29, in Scott, L., Cadman, A., & Verhoeven, R. (eds), Proceedings of the Third Conference on African Palynology, Johannesburg, 14–19 September 1997. A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
  5. WALKER, J. W.; BRENNER, G. J.; WALKER, A. G. (17 June 1983). "Winteraceous Pollen in the Lower Cretaceous of Israel: Early Evidence of a Magnolialean Angiosperm Family". Science. 220 (4603): 1273–1275. doi:10.1126/science.220.4603.1273. ISSN 0036-8075.
  6. Coetzee, J. A.; Praglowski, J. (1988). "Winteraceae pollen from the miocene of the southwestern cape (south africa)". Grana. 27 (1): 27–37. doi:10.1080/00173138809427730. ISSN 0017-3134.
  7. Taylor S. Feild, Tim Brodribb & N. Michele Holbrook (2002). "Hardly a relict: freezing and the evolution of vesselless wood in Winteraceae" (PDF). Evolution. 56 (3): 464–478. doi:10.1554/0014-3820(2002)056[0464:HARFAT]2.0.CO;2. PMID 11989678.
  8. Poole, I (2000). "The First Record of Fossil Wood of Winteraceae from the Upper Cretaceous of Antarctica". Annals of Botany. 85 (3): 307–315. doi:10.1006/anbo.1999.1049. ISSN 0305-7364.
  9. Page, Virginia M. (1979). "Dicotyledonous wood from the Upper Cretaceous of central California". Journal of the Arnold Arboretum. 60: 223–249.
  10. Gottwald, H (1992). "Hölzer aus marinen Sanden des oberen Eozän von Helmstedt (Niedersachsen)". Palaeontographica Abteilung B. 225: 27–103.
  11. Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (1998). "An ordinal classification for the families of flowering plants". Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. 85 (4): 531–553. doi:10.2307/2992015. JSTOR 2992015.
  12. Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2003). "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG II". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 141 (4): 399–436. doi:10.1046/j.1095-8339.2003.t01-1-00158.x.
  13. Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2009). "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG III". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 161 (2): 105–121. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.00996.x. ISSN 0024-4074. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 May 2017.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  14. Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2016). "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG IV". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 181 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1111/boj.12385. ISSN 0024-4074.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  15. an der Ham, Raymond; Joan van Heuven, Bertie (2002). "Evolutionary trends in Winteraceae pollen". Grana. 41 (1): 4–9. doi:10.1080/00173130260045431.
  16. "Winteraceae: Plant family". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 26 September 2016.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.